Archive | June, 2013

Lets all think about marketingcampaigns

June 28, 2013 | 0 Comments

What do you see when someone asks you how marketingcampaigns are created. Creative people doing all kinds of stuff to get inspiration. Locking themselves up in an office, taking a walk or just going to a bar for a drink and look around? That is a common image. An image that can change quickly in the near future. We all can think about campaigns, crowd-sourcing is the new game.

Unilever plans to expand its use of crowd-sourcing to create more relevant marketing campaigns for all its brands. A partnership with eYeka will see the co-creation platform based in France use its online community to develop new campaigns for the FMCG giant across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, Russia and South Africa.

Rahul Welde, Unilevers vice-president (media) for Asia, Africa, Middle East, Turkey and Russia told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the company intends to engage more fully with its most creative consumers. The objective is to build a great creative product working very closely with Unilevers agencies, and create a stronger ecosystem and platform, he said.  Ultimately, this agreement will accelerate the development of a culture of co-creation and collaboration that drives innovation and creativity, he added. For eYeka, crowd-sourcing can give major brands a considerable competitive advantage by turning to consumers for ideas. Francois Petavy, CEO of eYeka, said: Brands and their agencies are opening up to creative ideas from more diversified sources such as communities of consumers. We believe in a new open model where brands and their agencies collaborate with consumers and other non-traditional players on a sustainable basis, he added.

Petavy argued in a recent blogpost that crowd-sourcing was an idea whose time had come and it was set to take off in 2013. He said it was capable of solving real business problems and that ROI could be demonstrated.

And the Innovation Excellence website listed six partnerships, including the Unilever-eYeka agreement, that it said proved that crowdsourcing was going mainstream.

The others included Deloitte and Kaggle, Sony CEA and Mofilm, Edelman and Poptent, Booz Allen Hamilton and Innocentive, ADK and eYeka.

How Digital Asset Management Helps Marketing, Creative and Sales Teams

June 27, 2013 | 0 Comments

Digital Asset Management (DAM) technologies have emerged as a strategic necessity for businesses and organizations of all types to operate more efficiently and effectively. Watch this video to learn more about how DAM solutions are used by marketing, creative and sales teams to (1) improve efficiency of marketing operations, (2) increase brand consistency, and (3) increase return on marketing investments.

This short video from Widen Enterprises tells the story on how DAM systems are used by marketing, creative and sales organizations. Learn more at www.Widen.com

Why Blending Brand and Product Content Has Become Critical

June 25, 2013 | 0 Comments

Enterprise marketers across all industries are charged to drive profitable revenue growth by delivering exceptional experiences to current and prospective customers. This would be a difficult task under any circumstances, but it is even more difficult today because potential buyers are more demanding than ever.

Several factors have helped elevate buyer expectations, but three technological developments stand out in importance.

  • The appearance and proliferation of online communication channels and digital communication devices – particularly the meteoric rise of tablets – gives both consumers and business buyers more choices for engaging with brands. Rather than treating various devices and platforms as eitherhttp://www.timeinc.com']);" target="_blank">A recent study by Time Inc. found that “Digital Natives” (individuals who have grown up using mobile technologies) move between devices and platforms 27 times per hour.
  • Today’s channels and devices have enough bandwidth and computing power to allow the use of rich media content such as high quality video and audio.
  • The development of “touchscreen” technology fundamentally changes how individuals interact with their communication devices and experience digital media.

These developments have helped elevate buyer expectations and have substantially raised the bar for providing memorable customer experiences.

  • Buyers now expect interactions with brands to be truly interactive. They expect every communication vehicle – an e-mail message, web page, or Facebook page, for example – to include multiple options that will take them to additional information. I contend that, in the very near future, most buyers will also expect even traditional printed materials (print ads, catalogs, etc.) to provide similar options via QR codes or other technologies.
  • Buyers now expect brands to provide visually compelling information through the use of rich media. If a sweater is available in four colors, they want to see all four colors. A video showing a product in action is more compelling than a static brochure describing how the product works.
  • Buyers increasingly expect to have easy access to detailed information about the products or services they’re interested in. What are the product’s dimensions and weight? What accessories for the product are available? Is there a more (or less) expensive model with more (or fewer) features?

Buyer expectations – enabled by the capabilities of today’s digital communication devices – have blurred the lines between traditional marketing communications content and product information. At ADAM, we believe that delivering exceptional customer experiences in this environment requires the integration of digital asset management and product content management technologies.

We’ve recently released a new white paper on this important topic written by Pieter Casneuf, ADAM’s CEO. You can download a copy of the new white paper here.

Knowing your audience

June 21, 2013 | 0 Comments

Marketing is all about knowing your audience and what they want, or what you want to make them believe they want. Right? So getting knowledge about your targetmarket is crucial.

The company Mapbox is a big help in this. For instance, they use twitterdata  and map where people are using what kind of mobile device. So, when your targeting France, you know you have to use  Blackberry, and if your targeting The Netherlands use the Iphone.

Check out your audience

Inaugural Brand2Global Conference

June 20, 2013 | 1 Comment

What is your brand essence and how can you assure that it is established accurately in each target country? What are the best practices for global advertising campaigns that combine a universal message, yet can be easily translated into local campaigns? What is the best strategy for international SEO and how can you take advantage of it while building your global brand and campaigns? How are social media outlets revolutionizing the way your brand interacts with customers across borders and how can you track and integrate the sentiments of your global customers in an effective manner?

These are just a few questions which will be answered during the Inaugural Brand2Global Conference at September 16th till September 18th in London. Main subject is Innovative Global Marketing Strategies.

Amongst the GMN Faculty Members who will speak are professor Robert Shaw, GMN Programme Director for Marketing Analytics. He will be delivering a full 1-day Global CMO Masterclass, on Measuring Marketing Performance. Professor Shaw will also be delivering a one hour session on ‘Measuring Marketing Performance’ during the main Brand2Global conference programme on 17th September.

Shaw will be followed by Dr Markus Pfeiffer, founder and CEO of Bloom Partners and GMN Programme Director for Digital Strategy and Innovation, on September 17th. Pfeiffer will be delivering a one-hour session entitled ‘Winning the Empowered Consumer’, sharing with delegates the results of the “Digital Readiness” Study 2013, providing some deep insights on key success factors for winning in a digital-first era.

Last but not least on September 18th David Haigh, Founder and CEO of Brand Finance plc and GMN Programme Director for Brand Valuation, will be delivering a one hour session on the results of the recent Brand Finance Brand League Tables and what the drivers of success are in building a global brand.

Booking your tickets is possible at www.brand2global.com

ROI of Marketing Automation

June 19, 2013 | 0 Comments

A fast, steady and predictable growth, that is what companies these days want. The fastest growing companies of today use repeatable marketing and sales 2.0 techniques to grow revenue predictably and reliably. They are embracing the shift from the selling process to the buying process, moving marketing from a cost center to a revenue generator. By replacing the old linear sales model with a new holistic approach, companies are redefining the way marketing and sales teams work together.

The new buying landscape has changed marketing’s approach to lead generation and management. This tectonic shift has created a need to improve upon outdated systems that can no longer keep up with the demand to increase lead flow, ensure lead quality, and prove program effectiveness and ROI.

Companies that implement a marketing automation system to support their marketing and sales efforts are better equipped to manage lead flow and process leads more efficiently. A whitepaper by Marketo outlines how marketing automation optimizes marketing programs and can help companies:

  • Create a faster and more predictable revenue cycle
  • Increase profitability with tactics that result in higher conversion rates
  • Align the efforts of marketing and sales teams to substantially increase topline revenue growth

Source: Marketo Benchmark on Revenue Performance as of Sept 15, 2012

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Why Big Data Isn’t a Panacea

June 18, 2013 | 0 Comments

As people increasingly use digital communication channels to access information, execute business transactions, and interact via social networks, the volume of data regarding these activities grows exponentially. This massive and growing volume of information is now being called big data, and few topics have received more attention in marketing and technology circles over the past couple of years. According to many pundits, big data can dramatically improve the quality of business decision-making generally and the quality and effectiveness of marketing in particular. It can enable companies to develop valuable insights about what current and prospective customers want, what competitors are doing, and how markets are changing.

The hype surrounding big data has been huge, and many prominent voices have been effusive in describing big data’s potential benefits. Recently, though, several articles and blog posts have attempted to provide a more balanced view of big data. The authors don’t dispute the importance of big data or the value of using data to support business and marketing decisions. However, they do identify some of the reasons that big data isn’t likely to be the “silver bullet” that the hype suggests.

Here are brief summaries of two of these recent commentaries.

Lithium)—In this blog post, Dr. Wu begins by stating that data is only as valuable as the information and insights we can extract from it. He then argues that data and information are not synonymous and, more importantly, that more data doesn’t produce proportionately more information because of the redundancy that exists in nearly all data sets. Dr. Wu also argues that not all information will provide insights. He contends that a substantial amount of the information in most data sets is not interpretable and therefore cannot produce insights. And, of the information that is interpretable, some will be irrelevant noise that cannot support valuable insights.

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Connectivity and data help marketing

June 14, 2013 | 0 Comments

The increased power of connectivity and sophistication of data can help companies create even greater brand experiences for customers, RSA Groups marketing director Dominic Grounsell explains at the Google@SMG event.

Grounsell picked up on the increasing power of connectivity and sophistication of data which can be used to more intelligently reach consumers with new information through marketing.

Grounsell believes increased connectivity will enable RSA to deploy marketing to consumers at the right time. He adds that advancements in social media means human experiences have become more instant and can create a world that is much more interesting than that of 10 years ago.

Nine magic marketing minutes

June 13, 2013 | 0 Comments

William Arruda. “Finding nine minutes and spending them building your brand doesnt seem like a hard task, but in this world of email overload, Twitter attention spans, and instant messaging interruptions, even a nine-minute habit can be hard to create.”

He’s got a few tips and tricks he shares here:

More Evidence that PIM Technology Drives Improved Performance

June 11, 2013 | 0 Comments

here), I discussed the growing importance of effective product information management (PIM), and I described research by Heller Software AG and Stuttgart Media University that documented the major benefits that enterprises will obtain by implementing dedicated PIM software technologies. Some of those benefits include:

  • Lower data management/maintenance costs
  • Reduced catalog creation costs
  • Lower translation costs
  • Greater use of product catalogs
  • More multilingual marketing

Recently, the Aberdeen Group released research findings that further demonstrate the value of dedicated PIM software technology. The Aberdeen research focused on retailers that use an “omni-channel” go-to-market strategy. These firms need to provide a consistent customer experience across multiple interaction channels (bricks and mortar, web, mobile, etc.).

The table below includes some of the findings of the Aberdeen research. These findings show the year-over-year impact of product information management/master data management systems on several key performance indicators. Results are shown both for retailers that use PIM/MDM technologies and for those that do not.

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